From The Desk Of Clarence Bass

Lift Slow or Say No?

We thought we were done discussing slow motion lifting, but no such luck. The
flurry of hits on our Lift Slow or Lift Fast article (# 34), which we
believe was generated by the "Going Super Slow" piece in Newsweek
(Feb. 5, 2001) and a segment on NBCís "Today" show, and some emails
taking us to task for not coming down four-square in favor of slow reps have
persuaded us that more comment is warranted. People are clearly excited about
slow reps. Ken Hutchins, the Florida-based trainer who founded the Super Slow
movement more than a decade ago and trademarked the name, has started something
that has legs.

Itís time for another effort to cut through the hype and try to understand
what slow-rep lifting will do and, perhaps more importantly, what it wonít
do. Letís start with two recent studies, one suggesting the promise of slow reps,
and the other raising some doubts about the scope of the benefits. Maybe we can
help people decide whether to "go slow" Ė or just say no.

Slow Group Gained 50 Percent More Strength

The first study was done in 1993 and repeated in 1999 by Wayne Westcott,
fitness research director at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts. The
study was described in Newsweek and will soon be published in the Journal
of Sports Medicine & Physical Fitness. The study was also presented in
March, 2000, by Richard Winett, Ph.D., one of the authors of the report, at the
annual meeting of the Society for Behavioral Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee.

In both studies, Westcott assigned untrained volunteers (men and women, mean
age 54) to one of two regimens. Both groups trained 2 or 3 times per week for
eight to ten weeks. They performed one set of 13 exercises on a standard
Nautilus circuit. The key difference between the two groups was rep speed. One
group did 10 to 12 regular-speed reps (7 seconds: 2 seconds lifting, 1
second pause, 4 second lowering). The other used a Super Slow training
protocol calling for 4 to 6 reps of 14 seconds each (10 seconds lifting, 4
seconds lowering). All participants were tested at the beginning and the end of
the study. Significantly, the slow lifters gained more strength than the
regular-speed lifters -- by 50 percent!

Super Slow advocates would say the impressive difference was because
going slow takes the momentum out of lifting and exhausts more muscle fibers.
While the total time under load was essentially the same for both groups (84
seconds), the more stressful lifting phase was more than twice as long for the
slow-rep group (60 seconds versus 24).

Most accounts of the Westcott study stop at this point. Remember, the
report of the study is still in press; it has not been published. The finer
details of the study are not widely known. One important detail is that the
slow lifters were tested using the slow 14-second cadence, and the regular-speed
group was tested using the regular 7-second cadence. There was no comparison
using a common cadence. For example, the two groups could have been tested using
an intermediate 4 or 5 second lifting phase, but that was not done. Each group
was tested using only the reps and rep speed they used in training.

The authors of the report acknowledge that the absence of a common testing
protocol was a possible flaw; it may cast doubt on the validity of their
findings. In effect, they compared apples and oranges. One canít help but
wonder what the result would have been had they tested for 8-rep maximum,
allowing the participants to use whenever rep speed they chose. In other words,
what would the result have been in a real-world strength comparison. Keep in
mind that the winner in a powerlifting or Olympic lifting contest is determined
on the basis of who lifts the most weight. Lifting speed is not restricted.

Speed of Lifting Improves Performance at Similar Speeds

Our second study, performed by D. K. Liow and W. G. Hopkins (1998) and
reported in the journal Medicine andScience in Sports and
Exercise, shows why using an apples-to-apples measure of performance is
so important. Thirty-nine experienced male and female kayakers were matched by
sex and sprint time and randomly assigned to a slow weight training, explosive
weight training, or control (normal training, without weights) group. They
trained twice a week for six weeks using unspecified sports-specific weight
training exercises. The kayakers were tested before and after for time in the 15
meter sprint.

At the very start of the sprint, when rowing movements are of necessity slow,
the slow-training group improved most (6.9 %), the fast group next (3.2%), and
the control group least (1.4%). Over the last 3.75 meters, when rowing is fast,
the fast training group improved most (3.0%), the slow group next (2.1%), and
the control least (minus 0.8%).

The researchers described the implications: "Slow weight training
exercises train one to respond best when moving slow. Fast weight training
exercises train athletes to respond best when moving fast. However, both forms
of training improved performance better than no weight-training."

That says it all, doesnít it? Lifts slow if you want to improve your
performance at doing things slowly, and lift fast if you want to get better and
stronger at moving fast. Kayakers training for sprints would probably be best
advised to do both.

The kayaking study probably produced the results that most exercise
physiologists would have predicted. After all, the most time-honored principle
in sports science is the specificity principle: specific adaptation to
imposed demand (SAID). Dr. Pat OíShea, who made the case for lifting rapidly
in our Lift Slow or LiftFast article, highlights the importance
of specificity in the second edition of his book Quantum Strength.
He calls the SAID principle the "guiding force" of strength training.
"It explains that physiological, neurological, and psychological adaptation
will occur in direct response to the imposed training demands. If, however,
these demands are not specific to the performance demands of your sport, no
functional adaptation will take place."

The Only Exercise Youíll Ever Need?

As reported in Newsweek, some Super Slow proponents
claim that slow lifting is the whole key to fitness. They say itís the only
exercise youíll ever need: It builds strength, larger muscles and even
aerobics fitness. This group actually discourages aerobic exercise, saying it
compromises muscle and strengthen gains, and isnít necessary for health and
total fitness. Thatís the extreme view. Only "true believers" such
as Ken Hutchins Ė a small but vocal minority -- go that far.

Slow reps improve proficiency at lifting slowly, but agreement stops there. Thereís even some question about the ability of slow lifting to
produce increases in muscle mass (hypertrophy). A very smart friend of mine, who
has been doing slow reps exclusively for several years, tells me that he has
gotten substantially stronger at moving weights slowly, but that he lost muscle mass. Itís only conjecture at this point,
of course, but he believes that slow lifting may in some way retard muscle
growth, perhaps by restricting the flow of blood and oxygen to the working
muscles. He speculates that there may be something about "the fatigue
mechanism with slow reps that doesnít quite provide the right signal for
hypertrophy." That remains to be seen, of course, but itís something to
watch as more people experiment with slow reps.

On the issue of aerobic conditioning, Dr. Steven Keteyian, a clinical
exercise physiologists at the Henry Ford Heart and Vascular Institute in
Detroit, in his online health column for the Detroit News, recommends a
well-rounded program that combines both resistance and aerobic training.
"Thereís no research supporting the use of [Super Slow lifting] to
improve cardiorespiratory or aerobics fitness," Dr.Keteyian writes. I
believe thatís the current consensus of informed opinion.

The Washington Post health section
reported just last week (2-20-01) that sports medicine experts say, "Thereís little evidence that
slow lifting beats standard weight training for building endurance or strength
Ė and absolutely none that it eliminates the need for aerobic exercise."

The Post also reported a little-known aftermath of Wayne Westcottís
slow lift studies. "The bad news," Westcott told The Post,
"is that when I finished both studies, only one of the 147 people
involved... wanted to continue the training. We feel itís a little too
tedious, too tough for the average person."